


you and your handsome mug

by ma-belle-evangelina (starswalkbackward)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Humor, M/M, Minor Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Minor Lydia Martin/Jordan Parrish, Oblivious Stiles, lots of fuss over a stupid coffee mug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 07:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4867913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starswalkbackward/pseuds/ma-belle-evangelina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles finds a mug in the cupboard with the name Derek on it. They don't even know a Derek. Until they do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you and your handsome mug

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarAmongStones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarAmongStones/gifts).



> **Alexandrea Starr:** this is a) grossly late, b) grossly inadequate and not up to my usual standards, and b) grossly unfinished. I shall try and remedy these mistakes with the next chapter. Happy late birthday!
> 
>  **To the rest of you:** a un-betaed. Sorry for any mistakes and all failed attempts at humor! And this is not the sequel to STMTLBIW, but that's still in the works. :)
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** I own nothing. Sad, really.

Stiles and Scott are broke ass college kids, so it goes without saying that everything within their tiny apartment—from the scuffed coffee table in the living room to the Buzz Lightyear plate in the cupboard—has appeared due to a combination of dedicated scrounging and luck. Everything not culled from their childhood homes originates from either a dozen Craigslist postings, a handful of side-of-the-road finds, or a few bored trips to garage and estate sales (the latter attended with Scott’s mom as she went on an eager hunt for well-priced china). Lydia may get a twitch in her eye whenever she visits due to the lack of anything resembling a unified theme, but Stiles and Scott are comfortable. They have everything they need to eat their ramen and play Xbox in peace. Aside from mountains of schoolwork and the poor water pressure in the shower, there’s nothing they worry about.

Until the Derek mug appears.

Stiles is flailing an arm within the cupboard because “there better be a cup left in here somewhere, Scott! I’m not drinking my orange juice out of a cereal bowl again, and it’s your turn to do the dishes!”

Scott looks up from his laptop and directs a reluctant eye toward the daunting pile in the sink. “Dude, can’t you just use the smallest piece of Tupperware? It might as well be a cup anyway.”

Scott is saved from his best friend’s indignant and long-winded response when Stiles’ fingers finally come into contact with a ceramic handle.

“Gotcha!” he says, pulling a mug out from the back corner of the cupboard. He happily ambles over to the refrigerator and has already uncapped the juice when he actually looks at the cup in his hand.

“Scott, we don’t know any Derek’s, right?”

Scott’s brow wrinkles as he thinks for a beat. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Then why do we have his mug?” Stiles asks, holding the thing up by the handle and pointing to the name. “See? _Derek_. Why would we have a Derek mug if we don’t know a Derek? It makes no sense.”

Scott shrugs. “Lots of our stuff doesn’t make sense. Why do we have that life-sized cutout of the mom from the Addams family in our coat closet?”

“For the last time, she’s _Elvira_ not Morticia Addams, and you know why we have that!”

Scott does not know. Stiles had simply lugged the thing through the front door one day with a “bro, we _need_ this.” Knowing it was better not to ask, Scott had just nodded. 

Stiles points at the mug again. “When you can’t find you or your friends’ names on the monogrammed novelty items at the store—and that is a pain I know acutely with the keyboard smash on my birth certificate, let me tell you—you don’t buy one, period! You don’t just pick a name you think looks cool. And if you were going to do that why wouldn’t you pick something actually cool like Bruce or Miguel or—“

“ _Bro_ ,” Scott says with his hands up in surrender, “it’s just a mug. I probably nabbed it at a garage sale without really looking at it because a cup’s a cup and we always need them.”

“A garage sale? That’s even worse!” Stiles barrels out of the kitchenette with arms flailing, and Scott—already bracing himself for a full-on tangent—looks mournfully at his roommate’s forgotten orange juice.

“Remember that time we went to that estate sale with your mom and they were selling the dead old lady’s photographs for a quarter each? Remember how sad that was? Years full of history and memories and inside jokes reduced to a price tag! For all we know there’s a Derek out there whose mother was a gifted ceramic artisan, and she crafted this piece for him with her own two hands while she was pregnant with him to let him know how loved and cherished he was, and now he doesn’t know Scott! He can’t know how loved he is because his mug is in the back of our cupboard being valued only slightly above our smallest piece of Tupperware!”

Scott blinks twice at him. “Why would a lady give a coffee mug to a baby?”

Stiles’ right eye twitches, but luckily Scott’s phone starts vibrating and distracts them both from the absurdity of their current conversation.

“Allison and Lydia want us to meet them at _The Pack_ tonight,” Scott says after reading his text message.

Stiles grimaces. “I hate that bar.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No. Also it’s French fry Friday over there and I have a coupon for their truffle fries.” 

* * *

The first thing that happens when they arrive at _The Pack_ is Allison and Scott pawing at each other so vigorously that Stiles is convinced that they’re trying to fuse together. The second thing that happens is Lydia snatching the coupon out of Stiles’ hand because it’s her cheat night and she wants all the junk she can get her manicured hands on. The third thing is them both spotting Deputy Parrish—the man they’re both crushing on—at the same time and speed-walking across the room to greet him.

Lydia gets there first because she has no qualms with kicking Stiles in the shin to slow him down. Luckily, he limps over in time to hear Parrish say the following:

“I’m here with two friends from high school, actually. They moved to New York right after graduation, but they’ve been back in town for a few months now. Do you remember the Hale twins?”

Lydia nods. “Yeah! Laura was a senior and head cheerleader when I was a freshman. And her brother was on the basketball team, I think. What was his name again?”

“Derek,” comes a gruff voice from behind them. They all turn to see a leather-clad man holding two drinks and scowling at them. Stiles takes one look at his stubble and the tight fit of his jeans and nearly swoons like one of the heroines in the harlequin romances his dad pretends he doesn’t read.

“Lydia Martin. I was also on the math team with you,” Derek says, leveling a glare at Lydia as he hands off a beer to Parrish. They can all hear the implied _how do you not remember my name_?

“You’ll have to excuse her,” Parrish laughs, and it’s a testament to this Derek’s attractiveness that Stiles isn’t seething with envy over the flirtatious way with which Parrish pokes Lydia’s side. “If you weren’t on the lacrosse team, you basically didn’t exist to this one.” 

“I recall freshman me making an exception for a certain senior in ROTC,” Lydia says, winking at Parrish. Stiles would normally chime in with an awkward joke about how even lacrosse couldn’t get Lydia to notice him back in the day, but instead his brain has finally processed the name of her forgotten fellow mathlete.

“Derek!” Stiles says, startling the man and finally drawing his intense stare over to Stiles. “I’ve got your mug!”

And damn his lack of brain-to-mouth filter because he knows that makes no damn sense to anybody but Scott (who’s too busy necking with Allison to explain that Stiles is _not irrevocably socially impaired because of too much video games. Stop it, Lydia_ ).

But to his and everyone else’s surprise, Derek’s face sheds all signs of confusion after a few beats and turns thoughtful, his eyes scanning Stiles from top to bottom in a way that makes Stiles unsure if he should be aroused or terrified. He frowns again when he’s done. “Huh. You’re not Laura’s usual type.”

And _what_? 

“What?” Stiles asks.

“My sister Laura,” Derek says, rolling his eyes. “If you have a coffee mug with my name on it, I’m assuming your one of her one-night stands?”

Stiles doesn’t even have time to be offended at Lydia’s disbelieving snort of _please, Laura and_ Stiles? He’s too busy a) wondering at the odds of actually meeting the owner of the mystery mug and b) figuring out where the hell this conversation is going. 

“Does your sister give out mugs with your name on it to people she sleeps with?” he asks before he can stop himself. “And by the way, I am most definitely _not_ one of those people because my roommate just picked the mug up at a garage sale, but if that’s a frequent habit of hers I’d seriously consider getting her into therapy of some sort because that is just—I don’t even know what it is, but it can’t be healthy. Like, I’m not saying the You-themed mugs equate to like, Flowers in the Attic type shit, but at the very least there has to be some sort of—“ 

“Oh my God,” Derek says, looking over at Lydia and Parrish with a mixture of disbelief and irritation. “Is he always like this?”

“Unfortunately,” Lydia sighs. “But I promise he grows on you a little bit. Like a fungus.”

“Hey, so does Derek!” And the beautiful woman who claps Derek on the shoulder can only be Laura, her features a softened but equally striking version of her brother’s. However, within minutes of being introduced to Lydia and Stiles, it’s easy to see that her personality couldn’t be farther from Derek’s. Whereas her twin has been a perpetual sourpuss, Laura is all smiles even when Derek—damn him—immediately reports that Stiles thinks she’s a pervert with potentially incestuous tendencies.

“Dude, absolutely not,” she laughs. “It’s not even like I intentionally leave a mug with my one-nighters. I forget them is all.”

“Why do you even bring them?” Derek asks, hand going to his temple. “Not only is it pointless, but that’s another morning I can’t enjoy my coffee and another run to the convenience store for a new cup.”

“It’s not pointless!” Laura elbows her brother and then turns to the rest of the group. “You see, I tend to have this problem with guys wanting to establish a full-on relationship on the morning after. And I’ve discovered that the best way to shake them off is just pretend that I’m nuts.”

“You don’t have to pretend, believe me,” Derek cuts in. Laura ignores him.

“So when they wake up in the morning, they find me sipping coffee at their kitchen table. But they aren’t greeted by cool Laura from last night, they’re greeted by Laura’s second personality,” and here she stops to level a gleeful punch to her twin, who’s now cursing violently under his breath. “Serial Killer Derek! Based on Grumpy Cat here and his resting murder face! His cup makes for an excellent prop.”

As Lydia and Parrish erupt into laughter, Stiles just sticks his hands into his pockets and grins at Derek. “Well, I stand by my assessment. Your sister needs help.”

For the first time tonight, Derek smiles. It’s a fleeting, awkward twitch of a thing, but Stiles mentally awards himself a brownie point anyway. 

“She’s beyond help,” Derek says. “But you know what’s not? My damn coffee mug. You’ll be saving me $4.90 in replacing it for the umpteenth time if you drop it by my place.”

“God forbid you don’t get to drink from something with your own name on it, you narcissist,” Laura says, but Stiles doesn’t register it because he’s too busy reacting to ridiculously good-looking Derek Hale inviting him over.

“You want me to go by your place? Like, me stopping by? Me heading over to where you live and seeing you there in that location? Where you exist? To your residence where—“ 

“Ugh, stop! You’re giving me a headache!” says Derek, swiping the air as if that will somehow shut Stiles down. “I’ll just come get my cup myself. Where do you live?” The way he growls the question out makes Stiles feel like he’s either being interrogated or threatened with bodily harm, so he can’t be blamed for the way he squeaks and dives behind Parrish and Lydia, who are watching the exchange with undisguised delight.

“Now do you see where I got Serial Killer Derek from?” Laura asks. “I promise he’s actually harmless, though.” She whips around to look back at her brother, cocking her head to the side thoughtfully. “I just wish you had better people skills so you’d stop scaring all of our new friends. I almost regret taking all the good genes.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it. Stiles is just as socially inept,” Lydia shrugs, and before Stiles can protest she’s got her hand over his mouth and is barreling on. “He’s at the shitty apartment complex on Cherry Lane. Room 303. You’ll know it by the scent of delivery pizza and sadness.”

Derek nods to where Stiles is trying to pry Lydia’s fingers off his face. “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he says. “I gotta go.” And with that, he vanishes with no other explanation. Laura just spares Stiles an apologetic glance before asking if they’re all up for a game of pool. 

Instead of answering, Stiles just thinks of Derek showing up at his apartment tomorrow. Scary Derek. Stiles is self-aware enough to know how fast he develops a full-blown _thing_ for scary people (case and point: his high school obsession with Lydia). Couple that with the fact that Derek has a supermodel physique a rugged face that already can’t stand the sight of Stiles and Stiles just _knows_ having the man in his home tomorrow is going to be awkward torture for both parties.

Stiles will probably pop a terror boner anyway and make it even _more_ awkward.

He sighs. “I should’ve just used the smallest piece of Tupperware.”

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Brenda for inspiring this story. I don't know who the hell you are, but we still got your mug! 
> 
> Also: Alex, I'm sorry I made you wait so long for _this_. You deserve better than me, friend.


End file.
